Karen X has moved so many places, she’s had a hard time keeping up. Help Karen get back on track and find her poems, scattered all over the place. She will be rifling through drawers and file cabinets, reading from her work as she goes. Bring a poem of your own to fill in for her inevitably distracted good-will hostessing. She’ll have an electric piano if you want to play along. Or bring an electric bass or guitar. It will be a Houseshoes-and-Hoodie Floor Show.

Karen X aka Karen Minzer is program director of WordSpace–At Your Service!–and has been, in turn, a teen mess, a beat hippie mess, a punk mess, a rehab mess, and a yoginic mess–everywhere and nowhere, with everyone and noone, still looking for her Sufi triumph.

Best selling author, actress, director, creator, co-writer and cult heroine of Strangers with Candy comes to Dallas in a rare public appearance. Sponsored by Half Price Books and WordSpace with a lot of help from the Kessler Theater.

Ben Fountain reads from his soon-to-be released new novel, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” published by Ecco/HarperCollins. Ben is the author of “Brief Encounters with Che Guevara” (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2006), which received the 2007 PEN/Hemingway Award and the 2006 Barnes & Noble Discover Award. His fiction has appeared in Harper’s, Zoetrope: All-Story, and the Paris Review, among other magazines, and has received an O.Henry Award, two Pushcart Prizes, two short story awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, and the McGinnis Ritchie Prize for Fiction. His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times Magazine and New Letters. From 2004-2006 he served as fiction editor of the Southwest Review and past WordSpace Board President.

Terry G. Odis is a 24-year old-alumnus of Tuskegee University, and a graduate of Hampton University with a Master of Architecture. A Chicagoland native, Terry began writing poetry as a college freshman struggling to balance academics and turbulent domestic life. Since then, he has made it his responsibilty to use his God-given gifts as tools to build up his environment through positive and informative poetry. He’s performed spoken word at venues, colleges, and schools throughout Chicago, Alabama, Virginia, Indianapolis, and more recently, the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. Terry has had the honor of sharing the stage with poets such as Black Ice, Abyss, Tasha Jones, and Tommy Bottoms. He is a member of The Left Side Poets, a group of individuals determined to contribute to the artistic world by providing personal accounts of life through poetry. In addition to being a flourishing spoken word artist, Terry is an architect and freelance graphic designer and currently resides in Dallas, TX.

Co-Hosted by Alexandra Marie and RockBaby

WordSpace Board and Program Committee Member RockBaby, award winning poet, teacher, HBO Def Jam poet and Host of the Dallas Poetry Slam curates a monthly Dallas Poetry Slam Featured Reader Series for WordSpace. Founded in 1994 by Clebo Rainey and his wife Naomi, Dallas Poetry Slam is the oldest and most respected Poetry Slam in the Metroplex. Dallas Poetry Slam is a non-profit organization that promotes the performance and creation of poetry while cultivating literary activities and spoken word events in order to build audience participation, stimulate creativity, awaken minds, foster education, inspire mentoring, encourage artistic statement and engage the DFW community in the revelry of language. Dallas Poetry Slam provides an opportunity for local poets to compete as individuals and with a team on the local, regional and national level. Poets are exposed to art, language and culture from a network of poets and the general population in various cities throughout the United States. As a member of the Dallas Slam Team, one can develop team building, leadership, writing and performance skills along with greater pride as an artist representing the City of Dallas.